Then why is the error message a surprise? Why do you have to ask questions that often?
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Martijn PietersMay 27 '14 at 10:02

17

Looks like you have been given time to make sure your question is excellent. Full of relevant detail, spell checked, good formatting and so on.
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Oded♦May 27 '14 at 10:04

4

@Oded: should the FAQ be updated? It claims a low-rep user can post a question every 20 minutes. The 90 minutes limit here is new to me.
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Martijn PietersMay 27 '14 at 10:10

@Martijn Pieters: Question i posted today(15 mins ago) is the question i was trying to post yesterday, but was unable to post because of that message. I have never seen that message before. So, that's why the surprise. FYI, i have not posted any question since last week.
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KanavMay 27 '14 at 10:15

@Kanav: see, that's what should have been part of your question to begin with. I suspect that there are rate limits per IP address in place as well as per account, to prevent people trying to work around the rate limits by creating new accounts. Which is why I asked if anyone else on the same network is posting questions as well.
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Martijn PietersMay 27 '14 at 10:19

@Martijn The 90 minutes is a recent change, Shog talked about it here, towards the end. Presumably the SO-specific FAQ should be updated, it's just not exactly high-priority.
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Cody GrayMay 27 '14 at 10:33

1 Answer
1

This is in place because folks need to see questions as a consumable resource that can be depleted, so that they:

Ask questions only when they really need to, presumably after some research hasn't paid off

Make questions that they ask count more, presumably because they've done some research.

If you need to ask questions more than every 1.5 hours, you probably aren't putting enough thought, time or both into your questions, which isn't fair to us, as it diminishes the perceived quality of the resource we're working very hard to build and maintain.

Note, this setting is only different on Stack Overflow, the limit is a bit higher on the rest of the sites in our network. We had to increase the amount of time folks need to wait until they become established users because people would request that we help them through every task they undertook during their work day. This is supposed to be Q&A, not pair programming.

It's a bit unfortunate for those that do ask good questions right off the bat, and bless you if you're in that very small minority - it won't take long for you to establish yourself, perhaps just one question could do it.

This is one step in some changes that we're making to stop those that don't actually learn anything by asking questions, and just continue to throw themselves at a brick wall with down voted upon down voted questions. It's not a good experience for them, and it's certainly not a good experience for us, so we're changing the system to intercede a bit sooner and slow folks down until they do learn how to ask better questions, or give up entirely.